Recently I had the opportunity to go hands-on with one of my most anticipated games of the year; Warhammer 40k: Darktide, developed by Fatshark Games. Warhammer 40k being one of my favorite universes in fiction, I keep tabs on pretty much every game that comes out for it, although, unfortunately, 40k has a… less than stellar track record when it comes to video game adaptation. However, Darktide showed some promise. With experienced developers, direct support from Games Workshop, and constant updates to how the game was going, I found myself growing cautiously optimistic about the release of Darktide, and based on my experience in the beta, the optimism was well founded. Continue reading for a Warhammer 40K: Darktide review where GameDrudge shares our first impressions. Let’s get into it!
The first thing I noticed upon launching a mission in Darktide was how stellar the art direction is. Warhammer 40k has always had a unique blend of brutal sci-fi industrialism mixed with Gothic architecture and design, and the team at Fatshark has absolutely nailed it. Taking place on the hive world of Tertium, a world hosting a continent sized city housing billions upon billions of residents, offered an opportunity to really get into the grungy undercity of the Warhammer universe. The residential districts look barely inhabitable and haphazard, the air itself is tinted in some areas to reflect the pollution constantly spewing out of the factories, and everything-and I mean everything- is a church. Your house is a church. The factory where you work is a church. The restaurant down the street is probably a church. The sight on your standard issue lasgun is reminiscent of a gothic church arch. Everywhere you go must be simultaneously utilitarian and practical while also being a shrine and place of worship to our beloved God Emperor of Mankind, blessed be his name.
This commitment to the aesthetic of 40k goes beyond just the locations, however; Fatshark is one of the only developers I can think of recently that realizes that humanity are not the good guys in this setting. The Imperium of Man is a bunch of corrupt, overly bureaucratic, zealous, warmongering lunatics that enslave their own kind, treat their soldiers as nothing but cannon fodder, and believe that anyone that isn’t human or holds different viewpoints than them is deserving of death. What really nailed this for me was, oddly, the med-stations; while they could’ve had a basic medical table or something, Fatshark went the extra mile and fully rendered a lobotomized dude inside of every med-station that works the blades and syringes to heal your character, with barely anything left of him besides his torso and head that isn’t grafted metal. The first time I made it to one of the med-stations, I audibly went “Oh yeah. These guys get Warhammer”.
But enough about how the game looks, how about how the game plays? Darktide is a first person “horde shooter” about purging the filthy unbelievers, heretics and daemon (Yes, daemon. In 40k its not Demon, its Daemon. Don’t ask me why.) infested lower levels of the hive city, similar to something such as Left 4 Dead, Payday or Vermintide. In the beta, there were four main classes to play around with;
- The Ogryn Skullbreaker, an 8 foot tall mutant equipped with a knife the size of a normal human’s arm and a comically large shotgun.
- The Zealot Preacher, an aggressive, close-range specialist whose base equipment includes an electrically charged Thunderhammer and a close-range rifle.
- The Insane Psyker, a space wizard who, based on dialogue is clearly not in a good mental state, equipped with a melee sword an assortment of spells.
- And the Veteran Sharpshooter, a classic sniper equipped with the iconic lasgun and able to deal extra damage to priority targets.
Darktide Character Classes(Beta)
There are 4 main character classes in the Beta for Warhammer 40K: Darktide - Ogryn Skullbreaker, Zealot Preacher, Insane Psyker, and Veteran Sharpshooter.
Most of my time with the beta was spent playing the Veteran, as the Imperial Guard they hail from is one of my favorite factions in 40k; the normal man armed with a laser rifle going up against the horrors of space. This is a good time to mention that all of your characters are fully customizable, complete with a backstory on how they ended up in this predicament. My guardsman, known as Greg, was caught complaining about the quality of his standard issue MREs (corpse starch made from the repurposed dead, as it were) and was immediately reported to the regimental Commissar. He was tthen punished accordingly by getting put onto a prison ship bound for Tertium. After completing your character customization and a short tutorial, choosing a mission launches you into the depths of Tertium with a randomly matchmade squad of 4 other players.
Put simply, the base gameplay of Darktide is as satisfying as serving our beloved Emperor can get. The movement feels fluid, yet weighty as you dodge heretic lasbolts and grenades. The ranged combat feels great, with appropriate audio feedback and recoil to sell the devastation you’re causing as you blow limbs off your enemies with the signature snap-crack of the lasgun firingThe melee combat in particular really shined through, and Fatshark’s previous work on Vermintide shows as you push, block and cut your way through hordes of poxwalker zombies. The enemies you’ll be blowing apart have no shortage of surprises as well; while your basic zombie hordes and enemy soldiers can be easy enough to mow down with the proper positioning and aim, enemies such as the trapper, hound and bomber require special attention and teamwork to corner and take down. Most of these special enemies can heavily damage or straight out incapacitate you if left to their own devices. This makes teamwork in Darktide paramount; knowing your strengths and the enemies’ weaknesses could be the difference between your team surviving another expedition into the Tertium hive and dying in service to the Emperor in the depths of some abandoned factory.
The only real complaints I have about the Darktide beta are technical issues and repetitiveness. To speak on the latter, Darktide’s art design and commitment to the setting is stellar, but after a while, especially with the limited amount of missions offered in the beta, it can feel like your either walking outside a big factory, in the main area of a big factory, or in the manufacturing area of a big factory. While not all of the missions have been revealed yet, I would love to see something taking place in a residential district, or a high-class church, or even somewhere on the upper levels of the hive city where living conditions are a bit better. Speaking on technical, a lot of this is to be expected, it being a beta, but I did crash more than a few times, and servers were not the greatest unfortunately. I would love to see improvements to some stuttering and frame drops when the game gets a bit busier, but other than that, no complaints.
We hope you found this Warhammer 40K: Darktide Review helpful, or at least interesting. Darktide launches on November 30th for PC, Xbox and Playstation, with a day one launch on Xbox’s Game Pass and an early “extra beta test” starting on November 14th for those who preorder. It will be $40 at launch, and, if the quality of what I played in the beta holds true, we have a lot to look forward to come late November.
